Mike's Saudi (19) Wives,Weevils, Scorpions And Cockroaches

  Through the shutters of the window in our lounge we could see a small farm opposite where the farmer lived with his two wives. Each wife had her own rooms at either end of his farmhouse I think they took turns to spend time with him. One day the two of them had an argument which rapidly developed into a wrestling match, it amused us greatly when the farmer appeared with a plank to separate them and send them to their relevant quarters. In those early family days my socializing with Ali Badi outside work reduced, if I took Syb and Karen along to his house they were expected to sit in the kitchen with his wife who spoke no English and was deeply suspicious of them. Western women were feared by most of the rural Saudi women as competition for their husbands. When Syb and Karen stood on the balcony overlooking the farm the two wives threw stones towards them to show their displeasure. Fortunately my two understood and came inside.

In the evening sun we used to sit on the balcony and watch the large cockroaches chase each other about. Some times when sitting on the toilet in the bathroom they would appear from the drain grid in the middle of the floor. One time shortly after Syb had arrived she decided to have a bath afterwards she said “Look at this insect I had to shush it on to the side while I had my bath” it was a scorpion. Scorpions were plentiful in the base and some of the BAC boys had little businesses setting them in clear plastic blocks, needless to say I have one in my Saudi display. Breakfast could be exciting not only did the Rice Crispies snap crackle and pop they jumped but you got used to taking the weevils along with the cereal.  We had a lot to learn about living in the town and I’m glad to say both Syb and Karen caught my enthusiasm for the place despite the insects.

They were about the only white women actually living in Khamis at that time, as they found out the first time they walked to the shops. Blonds had rarely been seen by the locals and they were fascinated by my two, who were a little disconcerted when a Bedouin made it obvious by looking straight at them walking backwards in front of them.  He looked pretty fearsome but they soon they realized that no one meant them any harm and they became more confident. Also as Khamis base was close by there were plenty of English speaking Saudi trainees and many of them knew me and were only too happy to help. Whenever the girls went shopping in town there always seemed to be one of the trainees in civvies (a thobe and gutra) there to advise them which produce to buy and how much to pay.

 

 

Mike's Saudi (18) Habala the hanging village

This is pretty much as I remember the hanging village Habala, now it is served by a cable railway from somewhere near where this picture has been taken. I believe it is becoming a bit of a tourist attraction.

 A few miles from the base the Mountains started huge valleys literally thousands of feet deep following one after the other like a great field ploughed by giants. I visited them with a couple of English friends, all along they were pretty much the same a shear drop of well over a 1000feet followed by a 45 degree slope of maybe another couple of 1000feet. At one point where the vertical cliff met the slope there was a little village, Habala, with a few terraced fields and a group of small houses.

The population of this place use to climb up to the top along a diagonal narrow ledge intermittently using tree trunks driven into the rock face where the ledge had petered out. At the top they parked their Toyota trucks for the drive into town. I believe the village originated in the time when the Turks invaded the area and these people took refuge in this virtually impenetrable place. It fascinated me; fortunately a little way from the village was a promontory where I went to photograph it.  As I tried to gain a suitable view point I moved slowly forward checking through the camera view finder as I went. For some reason I took the camera from my eye and found I was standing with my toes a few inches from and looking down a drop of thousands of feet. I moved slowly away from the cliff and sat down in a cold sweat. Every time I closed my eyes for days afterwards all I could see was the drop I had so narrowly escaped. How the population of the village could run up and down their path with their possessions balanced on their heads I just do not know.

A BAC friend of mine, a mountaineer decide he would like to climb from the village straight up the cliff face taking two days over it. The villagers thought he was mad and warned him not to go but John had climbed all over the world and knew exactly what he was taking on. He started his climb on the Thursday morning and by evening had reached just over halfway up where he camped on the cliff face in a hanging tent. On the Friday he completed his climb to find all the villagers at the top with the traditional cooked sheep and a pile of rice to celebrate his arrival. He visited the village several times more and was hailed as a hero each time. Later when John returned to the UK he joined a mountain rescue team in Wales and started an outward bound school.

 

 

Mike's Saudi (17) Our first house in Khamis Mushayt

Sadly this is the only picture of Old Khamis I could find, it seems that all I knew and loved has gone, even this is a poor modern interpretation of country house not a town house.

 

I had to wait over three long years for Syb and Karen to join me in Saudi but at least it had given Karen the time to finish her schooling and she was fast maturing into a young woman. There were no villas left on the camp estate so after my persistent lobbying, BAC had found us a place in town. It was a top flat with English neighbours below who in fact we very rarely met. The place was of typical local construction concrete blocks had been laid on top of the contours of the land, going up and down as did the surface below them. These were built to three stories high gradually levelling off through each course until at the top it was more or less level. The whole was then rendered to hide the construction. On first seeing it and knowing it was pivotal in getting the family to join me, I was delighted. A board stair case at the end of the building climbed to the first floor which through double doors led onto a large tiled hall lit by a tiny chandelier. Off this main thoroughfare led two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a lounge and a secluded walled ladies veranda with a fountain. The fountain drained straight into the flat below which we were to find out the first time we tried it. The bedrooms and lounge were joined on the outside of the building by a long balcony.  Back through the double doors and up the stairs led to the kitchen, dining room and a flat roof.

This was our home for about six months after which time we moved into a modern villa built to European standards on base. At the time of this move the flat walls were moving, in one bathroom the blocks had broken through the plaster, I was relieved to go. But our time there had been an experience; in many ways the owner of the flats lived in a small house next door with an adjoining door to our garden through the purdah wall. Most Saudi houses were surrounded by a wall at least six feet high to prevent the passerby from seeing the female members of the family. Our landlord used to use the flat’s garden for growing vegetables it had been agreed as part of the rent that when a tanker came to fill our water tank it also watered his vegetable patch. Tending his crops meant that he spent a lot of time round the outside of our building, he was an old man and Syb used to spend hours in the garden sat on a low stone wall communicating with him in their personal sign language.

He had a daughter who taught at the local girls’ school and would wave and shout “Hello” as she passed.  We never accepted his invitations to visit him in his home. BAC had warned us about that sort of thing, I was away at my job leaving the girls alone in the flat. Many are the times since we have cursed our reluctance to go, our later experience showing how foolish we had been to ignore this wonderful opportunity.

Mike's Saudi (16) How we taught the Saudis in the 1970s

The photograph taken by Mztourist of an RSAF Lightning aircraft at the RSAF Museum Riyadh

At work I was getting to know my trainers and trainees, if you can imagine a situation where the trainees had had little experience of science or engineering and the trainers were widely experienced men who found it difficult to connect with the these simple country lads. The Saudis had also been taught American English at an introductory course which only added to the trainers difficulties. You may get some idea of my job, to get these two factions to meet and it had to be done in the work situation. There was always the difficulty of maintaining the aircraft and training the Saudi boys. For us Brits there was the added challenge of training to an American system which at the time few Brits at any level understood.  It was only much later when I was working alongside the Americans that I really appreciated it and how appropriate it was to the Saudi situation at the time; remember this was in the 1970s.  To add to all these problems the Saudis had spent 60% of their schooling on religious studies which didn’t leave a lot of time for everything else. Another item seen by some as a problem was that the training program on the ground was overseen by the Pakistan Air Force. This really annoyed some of the section chiefs but I got on fine with my Pakistani I had only one and in the end he just trusted me to get on with it. It was very interesting time to be there, remember Saudi Arabia had only been united as a country about 40 years and was still emerging from a mainly desert community.

Perhaps it might help if I describe briefly the American training system known as ‘On the Job Training’ usually referred to as OJT. This meant that the trainee would accompany the technician in his daily work, studying what he did and gradually taking the job over, first under the guidance of the trainer/technician and later by himself at which point the trainee would be qualified in that single task. Once qualified the trainee would move on to a different job until he was qualified in all aspects of his work at which time he would receive a small technical promotion. This system was ideally suited to training a workforce intelligent but ignorant of any mechanical or electronic working. Theory was provided in formal lessons by people such as myself and in discussions with the trainer. This was a wonderful system to get a generation of young Saudis understanding the modern world quickly. The disadvantage was that they only learned what was immediately relevant to the job in hand.

The British way was to do an initial training course followed by experience in the field followed by a more advanced course, a system which was more in depth but took longer and required the trainee to have at least some idea of basic mechanics. If I may put it this way it required someone brought up Meccano not on herding sheep this is not an insult it was a fact in the 1970s. Here you can see the problem for the BAC trainers most of which had an RAF background and there was a tendency to teach beyond what was required for the job in hand. This frustrated both the trainer and trainee. However as I said earlier it was much later that I fully understood the advantages of the system particularly for the Saudi trainees and a country with a need to catch up on the modern world.